PAPRBOY
About the author
I was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, in the 1960s and 1970s, in a working-class Midwestern world shaped by paper routes, neighborhood routines, and the quiet expectation that you showed up, did your job, and figured things out as you went. My first real responsibility came early—delivering newspapers door to door as a young paperboy—an experience that introduced me to work, money, accountability, and human nature long before I understood any of them.
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Like many of my generation, my path through early adulthood was anything but linear. College in the mid-1970s brought freedom, confusion, and a series of hard lessons that continued well beyond graduation. I worked a string of blue-collar and entry-level jobs in restaurants, at the post office, in a gas station, sporting-goods stores, and a warehouse—jobs that steadily shaped the work ethic, resilience, and perspective I would carry forward.
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​That search eventually carried me into the bowling industry during its boom years, where I spent much of the late 1970s and early 1980s on the road as a sales representative. My work took me across the Midwest and the Deep South, living in Fargo, North Dakota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Columbus, Ohio; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Each city left its mark, offering its own mix of friendships, failures, small victories, and personal reckonings. Life on the road provided independence and experience—but also instability, loneliness, and the slow accumulation of consequences.
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During this same period, my personal life unraveled alongside my professional one. A young marriage ended badly, followed by a painful custody battle that resulted in long separation from my son—an experience that reshaped everything that followed. What came next was not a single turning point, but a prolonged stretch of survival: shared houses, including the infamous “Animal House” in Deerfield, Illinois; financial uncertainty; and a deep reliance on enduring friendships that had begun years earlier and carried me through it all.​
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In 1984, after years of drifting and false starts, I finally found solid ground at the Chicago Tribune. What began as a job became a foundation. I spent fifteen years working in circulation—work that challenged me, grounded me, and ultimately changed the direction of my life. For the first time, experience, persistence, and timing aligned.
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Later, my wife Buzz’s New England roots pulled us east, where I spent nearly two decades as Vice President of Circulation for New Hampshire’s largest newspaper. That chapter brought stability, perspective, and a sense of arrival that had been a long time coming.
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Today, I’m retired and enjoying the good things: writing, hiking with my dog Woodie, playing pickleball, volunteering as an AARP tax preparer, and taking long drives in a classic roadster—a 2000 BMW M Roadster—not unlike the MG Midget I once owned, though now with more wisdom behind the wheel. Through it all, Buzz has been my favorite co-conspirator and partner in mischief, and I’m grateful every day for the life we’ve built together.
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I wrote PAPRBOY to preserve a world that’s largely disappeared, to make sense of a restless journey, and to tell an honest story about work, failure, friendship, resilience, and the long road it sometimes takes to finally feel at home in your own life.​​
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Thank you for reading—and for spending some time in this story.